A cow rest her head on the shoulder of another cow at Dutch Hollow Farm which is a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2013 in Schodack Landing, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union) less

A cow rest her head on the shoulder of another cow at Dutch Hollow Farm which is a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2013 in Schodack Landing, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren / Times ... more

Brian Chittenden, left, and professional crop consultant Larry Eckhardt talk in one of the many barns at Chittenden's family's Dutch Hollow Farm on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2013 in Schodack Landing, N.Y. Chittenden's ... more

One of the greenhouses on Pam Schreiber's Eight Mile Creek Farm which is an organic farm Friday, Aug. 16, 2013 in Westerlo, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

One of the greenhouses on Pam Schreiber's Eight Mile Creek Farm which is an organic farm Friday, Aug. 16, 2013 in Westerlo, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

Photo: Lori Van Buren

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Pigs in a pen on Pam Schreiber's Eight Mile Creek Farm which is an organic farm Friday, Aug. 16, 2013 in Westerlo, N.Y. Olivia in the foreground is due to deliver piglets soon. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

Pigs in a pen on Pam Schreiber's Eight Mile Creek Farm which is an organic farm Friday, Aug. 16, 2013 in Westerlo, N.Y. Olivia in the foreground is due to deliver piglets soon. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

Photo: Lori Van Buren

Image 31 of 34

Pam Schreiber opens a gate to a cow pasture on her Eight Mile Creek Farm which is an organic farm Friday, Aug. 16, 2013 in Westerlo, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

Pam Schreiber opens a gate to a cow pasture on her Eight Mile Creek Farm which is an organic farm Friday, Aug. 16, 2013 in Westerlo, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

If you closed your eyes and imagined a farm, you'd probably picture something like the one owned by Pam Schreiber in Westerlo.

Her family's white house fronts the property, with a red barn behind it. To the left, rows of planted vegetables stretch away from the house. To the right, cows graze under the sun on grassy fields. Chickens share a pen with horses. A pickup truck rests on a dirt driveway.

These are classic and enduring farm images — farmers, crops and animals in proximity. And in upstate New York, many such farms still thrive.

But the reality of much modern farming is far different. Economies of scale and government policy work against small, diversified farms. Most of the food we buy is instead produced on an industrial scale, with vast fields of a single crop and animals that spend their lives entirely indoors, crowded like commuters on a Manhattan subway.

The industrial, factory-like farm has brought gains in efficiency and food costs.

But a rising chorus of critics question the consequences of industrial-scale farming, citing environmental degradation and potential threats to human health. They wonder if farms, especially those that raise animals, have grown too big, too fast.

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"There is a growing awareness and concern about how food is produced," said Bob Martin, a policy adviser at the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University's school of public health. "But it's amazing how little most people know about farm animals. The industry has really perpetrated this image of happy cows on the hillside and pigs lounging in a pasture, when the reality is far more grim."

It noted that the crowding of thousands and thousands of animals in relatively small spaces requires the frequent use of antibiotics to stem disease and pathogens, and warned that larger concentrated animal feeding operations, as the farms are called, are potential breeding grounds for diseases that could be harmful to humans and resistant to medicines.

It noted that industrial agriculture has been devastating to some rural communities, replacing self-sufficient farmers with low-wage workers.

And the report said basic concern for animal comfort and welfare had been abandoned in the rush to maximize profit.

"The present system of producing food animals in the United States," Martin wrote, "is not sustainable and presents an unacceptable level of risk to public health and damage to the environment, as well as unnecessary harm to the animals we raise as food."

Little about large-scale agriculture has changed since report's release. Federal regulators and politicians, Martin said in an interview, mostly ignored its conclusions.

But closer to the ground, in homes and farms across the country, something is happening.

Books on food production appear on bestseller lists. Restaurant chains take pains to seem sustainable, and one, Chipotle Mexican Grill, even aired an advertisement that repudiates factory farming. Most significantly, the number of small farms in the U.S. is on the rise as more shoppers seek an alternative to industrial food.

Upstate New York is at the forefront of the change.

There are 67 farmers markets in the Capital Region and surrounding counties — offering lifelines for small farmers. Most area supermarkets sell at least some food from local growers, while many restaurants brag about farm-to-table credentials. The region is peppered with people and farms like Schreiber and her Eight Mile Creek Farm.

Schreiber was nearly 40 when she became a farmer, when she moved to Westerlo with her three children, when she decided raising organic vegetables and meat was her way to make a better world. In her life before farming, Schreiber worked in health care.

"You're treating sickness after the fact instead of working on prevention," said Schreiber, who mostly sells her meat and produce directly to consumers. "I really believe that food can be our medicine, and that eating healthy can keep you healthy."

Schreiber had no farming experience when she bought the land, and nearly everything she knew about raising food and animals came from the books she'd read. Today, her farming techniques diverge from modern farming practices, but would have been familiar to farmers of generations past.

At Eight Mile Creek Farm, crop diversity guards against pests, helping Schreiber avoid pesticides. She rotates animals from field to field, their manure revitalizing the soil and negating the need for the chemical fertilizers used on industrial farms. Her animals eat the crops she doesn't sell. Unlike CAFOs, she has no excess manure to ship away.

Industrial-scale food is largely raised beyond the view of consumers, arriving neatly packaged in the store. But Schreiber welcomes visitors to her farm and even sells food directly from her house.

So far, Eight Mile Creek is a success story. Schreiber believes her model is one that could feed much more of the population.

"I do love what I do," she said, "and I believe in what I'm doing."

Farms in New York are generally smaller than those elsewhere in the country, where land is cheaper. The state is mostly a small player in the world of industrial farming.

But there are big operations here, too. The state identifies 14 farms as CAFOs in the Capital Region's four core counties. Notably, Thomas Poultry Farm in Schuylerville has 200,000 hens.

Compared to many other states, New York's rules on farms with large numbers of animals are strict.

Just ask Brian Chittenden. The Columbia County dairy farmer spends much of his time making sure he's in compliance with state regulations. See, Dutch Hollow Farm has 600 milking cows, and that makes it a CAFO.

To some ears, a CAFO is automatically a factory-style farm. But not all CAFOs are even remotely similar: Dutch Hollow Farm has little in common with an operation that has, say, 800,000 hogs.

Like other businesses, most farms start small. But what happens when the farm is passed down to subsequent generations? What happens when the income needs to be divided among siblings? Usually, the farm grows.

That was the case at Dutch Hollow, which Chittenden and his two brothers bought from their parents. Today, Dutch Hollow grows 2,200 acres of feed for its cows, and sells milk to Cabot, Hudson Valley Fresh and other smaller, local producers.

The farm's cows aren't pastured. They're largely kept in large, open-air barns that control the flow of manure.

Chittenden loves the beauty of cows spread across a hillside. But the economics of modern dairying don't allow it, he said, at least not for a multi-owner farm like his.

"What the world wants is cheap food," Chittenden said. "You're blessed with the cheapest food in the world."

That's true, according to federal statistics. Americans on average spend just 5.5 percent of disposable income on food prepared at home, far less than other industrialized countries and down dramatically from decades past. In 1950, for example, Americans spent 17 percent of their income on food for home.

That's the upside of the modern food system.

But critics of industrial-scale farming argue that cheap food isn't really cheap. The costs are just paid away from the supermarket.

Federal taxpayers provide about $25 billion annually in subsidies, mostly to large growers of commodity crops such as corn, wheat and soybeans — widely used in processed or junk foods. A farmer like Schreiber, meanwhile, gets no federal subsidies, one reason that food from small farms is more expensive.

(A pound of Schreiber's chicken, for example, sells for $5 to $6 — more than twice the supermarket price for non-organic meat.)

Critics of the food system also point to rising health-care costs tied, at least in part, to diet-related diseases like diabetes, and the difficult-to-determine costs of ecological problems tied to manure, fertilizers and pesticides.

"Our environment is a mess, and a lot of it has to do with how we produce food," said Jody Bolluyt, co-owner of Roxbury Farm, a community-supported grower of meat and produce in Kinderhook. "People need to be aware of the real costs."

The report from the Pew Commission said much the same, while recommending ways the food system should be changed. It suggested, for example, limiting the use of antibiotics and antimicrobials in animal production, and the aggressive enforcement of anti-trust laws to level the playing field for smaller farmers.

The report was not the work of activists: Commission members included ranchers and farmers, a former agriculture secretary and the head of a large food company. It was even chaired by John Carlin, a former governor of Kansas who was raised on a dairy farm that grew crops and milked 40 cows.

Today in Kansas, Carlin wrote in the report's introduction, "it is nearly impossible to find that kind of diversified farm."

But that isn't the case locally, as illustrated by the Chittenden and Schreiber farms, among many others.

Schreiber, as she offered a tour of her farm on Friday, talked with pride about the quality of her food and the treatment of her animals. She conceded that the economics of her path are sometimes terrifying — she has no retirement plan — and says there are still nights when she wakes with worry.

But Schreiber is optimistic about farming. In part, that's due to growing public interest in food and how it's grown.